AuthorTopic: Can I have problems with this old videocard? Xorg and VESA how-to request. (Read 4802 times)

Hi to all, I'm new on this place!!! Forgive my English. Let's talk about my problem. I have Ubuntu on my notebook and I have to say I like Linux. I heard about the possibility to install optimized Linux versions for very old hardware. Well I have an old machine (you can see its specifications in my sign) and a friend of mine told me about Vector: it can run on 386 systems so it should run on it. Before of trying Vector on my secondary machine I tried Linpus live (it needs 128 MB of RAM so I gave it a try... I have the live distro) and I had a black screen with band artefacts: the only working thing I saw was the pointer. I fear to have similar problems with Vector, but having no live distro how can I ensure that? On the Internet I red it's possible to install the Vesa drivers (that are universal) using Xorg... but I don't know how to do it! Infact I found some infos but they're difficult for me, I understood I have to edit a configuration file... or something like... please help me! My videocard is a Palit SiS based on the SiS 6326 GPU. Thanks in advance, I hope I had explained the question correctly.

There are many versions of Vector. The standard versions and the one optimized for 386 or faster systems. I knew of the live distro of the standard version, not of the light! Thank you very much, I'm downloading it!

P.S.: the link you provided me is broken but I found the working one anyway!!! Thanks, thanks and thanks!

So the friend of mine was wrong! He said i386... I'll make fun of him, hehehe!!! Then I have to search for other distributions because I think I'll be able to find a system so old and I'm very curious to run Linux on it!!!

Heck, you can install Linux on just about anything. I even installed it on a toaster one time. I built my own distro for it, called it ToasterNix. The last version was 0.1.0.7. When you put a piece of bread in the toaster with ToasterNix installed, the toast would come out looking like this:

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"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." - Linus Torvalds, April 1991

Sorry, bud, I had a good thing going but you-know-who got word of it and now all of the toasters have Windows CE installed on them. That's why toast takes so much longer to make now.

For a while there, a lot of toast came out looking like this:

That was back in the 90s. But then the US Justice Department sued them, and they had to make take the logo off the toast.

Nowadays, in order to put a different OS on any toaster, you have to buy a special modchip, probably an illegal one, and then do a bunch of stuff like compile a special kernel. I probably shouldn't be telling you all this, because of the non-disclosure agreement from the settlement. Can't distribute ToasterNix anymore though.

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"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." - Linus Torvalds, April 1991

I'd feel much happier devouring the Windows logo than that poor old smiling Tux.. I happen to be a vegetarian.

Yeah, but eating these toasts doesn't mean eating penguins.(I'd definitely not do that)It's just means having a note on each toast that it's made with care and does not contain any viruses and other crap.

I forgot to mention ... back when I was working on the ToasterNix project, I got a nasty email from none other than Richard M. Stallman. He said I should really call it GNU/ToasterNix, y'know, because of all the people from the GNU project who had contributed code to the whole thing. I told him no way, so he got some undergrad at MIT to fork their own project. I don't think many people ever installed it, but a few might have. Some time ago, I heard that somebody put a page up on sourceforge saying they were working on GNU/ToastHURD, but I don't think anything came of it. Anyway, if you installed the GNU version of my distro your toast would come out looking like this:

I got an email not long ago from somebody saying they were using my GPL code for a graphically rich OS with a state-of-the-art GUI called BeToast. I guess we'll see.

Tom

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"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." - Linus Torvalds, April 1991

I have a little problem with Vector light. I tried the live version anc my P II gives me a black screen: the monitor doesn't support the mode and ask to set the output in 1280x1024x60Hz (if I remember well). I tried all of the boot modes without effects. So I think I should give some commands via terminal... can you help me? Thanks in advance!

P.S.: I too am vegetarian since ten years... it's hard but I'm happy, animals should be petted not eaten.